Leaves in the River
by coeur-d'astronaute
Summary: "I met a girl when she was lost and I was drunk and it was dark and cold out." In the middle of the night two strangers have a walk and talk about nothing at all. It's not love or a fairy tale or an epic. It's just life and the many parts that make it the indescribable mess of truly wondrous and simple moments.


_It was a long, long cold year, _  
_but the thaw is finally here._

There was a quiet echo of skates slicing across the dusty film on the ice that did not ring and bounce around in the wall of frozen white forest that surrounded the river bend almost completely, but instead the noise seemed to sprint and dissipate among the skeleton branches and powdery snow, disappearing like half-finished whispers, dead on the lip before the ear could have a chance at deciphering. Like sentinels, the ancient trees with dry, peeling and cracked bark skin watched the graceful lethargy of tired legs and a wakeful mind gliding across the momentarily tamed river. In the gray of the pre-dawn morning, their white-capped tops blended right into the overcast clouds, bleeding the earth into the sky and forcing the long slivering hisses of skates to make tracks through the snow with the noise as they were trapped by the ceiling of the world.

Once the snow that had fallen in the night like a downy blanket of winter softness was cleared, the steady and slow warm up of steel kissing ice in a lazy fashion slowly disappeared, and a more methodical and evened tempo began; forceful and with purpose finally, the strokes of the skates did not grow much louder though instead of trailing into ellipses like stories with forgotten endings, they were staccato phrases with precise words. Steam rose and fuelled the clouds above so that the lone, sleepless skater seemed to be a significant producer of the overcast morning of gray clouds laden with a potential noonday flurry. While the small huffs and warmth escaped through her mouth, the cold air dried and constricted her throat and nose. It was a familiar feeling that was welcomed and enjoyed with eager inhaling of the dry air that married the crispness of deep winter with the faint and final effort of the pines and dogwoods to remind the world that they had once contributed before going dormant and surrendering to the inevitability of changing seasons. So ancient and forgotten was this place, on the edge of a feeder river on the edge of the province, on the edge of civilization, that the skater felt intrusive into the familiar museum between the branches.

After much restraint, the skater finally picked up the stick she'd been avoiding on the edge of the land. With a grand flourish she moved the hockey stick with an imaginary puck around the river, testing and pushing and cutting her own corners in a decidedly simple rejection of the quiet she'd created. Just as dawn cracked for a moment over the eastern ridge of the mountains with the sun making itself known before being hidden by clouds, so too did the stick ring out now in loud bangs and scrapes that echoed right against the mountains in the distance and among the slumbering trees, nearly causing them to shiver and jump at the startling new noises. Like a rooster's call, the slicing on the ice and the handling occurring in precise, dominant cuts grew in volume parallel to the growing concentration on the face of the skater in question.

In due time, naturally she toed the old spare puck from the spot she'd entered the ice. The longer she moved, the longer she felt the rubber disk bouncing between her stick, the longer she focused upon the perfection that came with her precise and pinpointed muscle movements, the longer Gail found herself still unable to reach a point of escape that normally accompanied such motions. Even as sound itself seemed to retreat behind the overbearing grinding and churning of the thoughts in her head, Gail found herself still trying to drown it out by kicking her feet harder, by hitting the ice quicker, by slapping the puck more than she knew she should, and sprinting to chase it when it inevitable escaped. The grace and reverent prayer of warm up and ritual of clearing the ice was lost in the fury of trying to escape the thoughts that plagued her. And the trees simply watched on through sleepy, lidded eyes, grumpy from the racket of the angry and confused player.

So engrossed in mapping out each precise movement and pushing every joint and muscle and bone to a threshold they were not supposed to approach was Gail, that the appearance of a shadow leaning against the the tree by the bend went unnoticed for well over a solid half of an hour. And when she finally noticed, she refused to acknowledge it for another few minutes, until the realization made her so sloppy it was pointless not to recognize its presence formally.

She chased and played against the ghost of a seven year old self struggling with the stick and unable to take it from her grandfather. She played against the ghost of her brother, always bigger than her, always using his force and making her become faster and stronger at a young age. She played on this hallowed ice against a historical era that was forever shut to her, no matter how long she beat upon the door.

With a final wind up and slap of the puck back towards the shore, Gail took a moment to bend over and balance the stick on her knees to try to catch her breath. Only then did she realize that it felt as if she'd been holding her breath for years. She gasped and took all that she could, becoming aware of the intricacies of her body and being alive and inhabiting it at the same time. While so distant and broken from it while focusing on not thinking, Gail did not realize that there was a hot sweat attacking her skin, that it made her hair fly away and freeze, that it grew cold and like ice on her jaw and neck and under the ratty old jacker she dug out of the closet. So, despite the shadow lurking on the shore, she stayed bent over, flexing her grip on the old wooden stick and remembering what it felt like to breath. And she wiped her forearm along her forehead and took in the scenery for the first time in nearly ten years. The trees were all the same though she suddenly felt as if they had shrunk. And the river seemed not as wide as she remembered as a child. She was struck with a fear of outgrowing her own past.

It was just another thought to weigh her down at night and thistle itself into the recesses of her brain this week. From her place out over the water she watched the body on the shore bend over to pick up the puck she hit in that direction and she reluctantly pushed off on jello-like limbs to join the world of the living once more.

"I figured you'd be out here," her brother greeted her with a small smile. She watched him retreat slightly into his upturned collar on his coat to protect his ears. "I thought I'd watch you for a bit before telling you that you're absence is noted at the cabin." He held the puck in his hand, flipping it around, rubbing the edges with his thumb.

"It's barely seven," Gail furrowed her brow after checking her watch.

"You looked good out there," Steve offered as Gail sat on the old, frozen log and began rubbing her knee before unlacing her skates. "How did it feel?"

"Good," she swallowed, staring out at her lines and curves etched into the ice. Her leg was throbbing, but she didn't care. It had felt good.

Steve was wary to push the subject. Missing one season of play was enough to put his sister into the most sour mood he'd ever encountered, and bringing up her injury was like loading the gun and handing it to the general of the firing squad. But watching her skate this morning, watching her movements seem just as good, if not better, than they'd been before, it made him eager to see her back on the ice in a game, on her team, back in her element.

"I don't think I've been up here for a winter in..." the brother genuinely paused as he took a seat beside his sister. She did not move to remove her skates yet. She did not move to rub her knee any longer. Instead he sat beside her as she stared out into the forest on the other side of the river, into the mountains past it in the distance, into the horizon that hid behind them. She was more still than she had been in hours, and it made her twitch. "I think it's been nearly a decade."

"We weren't even in high school," Gail confirmed with a sigh. The sweat dampened her clothes and made her shiver in the morning.

"Man," he shook his head, unable to form something more. She just pursed her lips in agreement.

"It feels eerie, right?" she asked, turning to face her older brother. He had the family looks while she had the family talent. Where he had the red hair and crooked nose, she had the slap shot and deke. The only thing that linked them was their eyes, blue like ice, blue like wildflowers, vibrant and frozen and cold. "Being here again."

"Yeah," he nodded after seriously contemplating what he thought he was feeling. "I'm stuck between feeling completely like I don't belong and like nothing has changed, every minute. And it's not that I sit between the two ends, it's like I'm bouncing back and forth constantly."

"Yeah," Gail agreed, deciding that she wouldn't be able to articulate it any better.

The morning raged on in its quiet, simple way around them. Gail only moved to stretch out her leg slightly and her brother only shifted to tuck his hands into his pockets. There entire life had been spent here, it felt like. Every important milestone occurred, right here, and they left it all. It might have been guilt or regret, but it wasn't; at least not exclusively. Gail and Steve spent every waking moment with the grandfather when they were growing up. And they grew up on the ice and when the ice melted, they swam in the river, fished and hiked and biked and lived among the dirt and trees. While their mother was always working they were shipped up North for weeks, and summers, non stop. It might have been what changed Gail's life completely.

"How did it feel out there?" Steve ventured, not looking at his sister.

"Good," she nodded, unable to elaborate on the mixed emotions she had on the ice with this day and her past few months.

"When will you get back?"

"Training camp starts in two weeks, and I have an appointment with the team doctor on the third, so I guess I have until then to figure out if I even want to get back," she explained with a sigh.

"If you want to?" he asked, furrowing his brow and looking at her now.

"Yeah. If." She knew he wanted to yell. "I don't want to talk about it."

"But Gail, this is it. This is the time. This is the year before the Games."

"I don't want to talk about it," she said with more force. "I just... All I want to do is mourn, and I can't... I can't figure out how to do that." Her jaw clenched and she tried to swallow at the confession. "And that's all I can think about right now. Not about some stupid promise I made when I was six. Not about myself or my knee or my life. Not even about Dad and the property and all of it. I just want..." She inhaled greedily. "I just want to grieve properly. And all of that is getting in the way."

They were quiet again as a lone pair of geese sounded off above and streaked across the clouds. They were quiet as the river slid along, suffocated and angry about it under the ice. They were quiet as the branches knocked against each other in a slight breeze with their arthritic joints and boney limbs.

"Mom wanted to have breakfast," Steve stomped his boots before getting ready to stand. He had a simple mission and he was nearly done with it with little to no fight from his stubborn sister. This was the moment of truth though. He watched her scowl and frown and look down at her skates. "We have to be at the church at noon."

"Alright," Gail agreed in a stunning turn of events. She kicked off her skate and pulled on her boot.

* * *

There was something miraculous in the subdued peace in the street when compared to the cacophony of raucous revelry in the bar. As the large red door swung shut behind her, Holly was consumed by the absence of noise and people and inundated with the cold and the silence. The party became a dull murmur behind the door and the town slept on the quiet streets, alone and secure.

With a sigh, the girl pulled on the edges of her coat, tucking them into herself and trying to fight the bitterness in the air. Her cheeks soon lost their heated burn of the hot bar and laughter of some of her oldest friends. Standing in the cold, huffing and losing her warmth, the constricting of each capillary under her skin seemed to travel like a chain that slowed and worked harder under the influence of her drinks. She looked up the street and then down, debating which was the proper way to get back to her sister's place. Each end tapered off into darkness and each seemed less likely with every perplexed gaze.

Unsteady and unsure of her selection, Holly committed to her choice and took the first few steps in one direction before pausing and weakly looking back at the red door of the only tavern in the small town. She knew she could go back in and ask her sister to point her in the right direction. But in doing so, she would be sucked back into the terrible time she'd been having at this make shift bachelorette party with her soon-to-be brother-in-law's sisters taking it upon themselves to entertain the girls from the South, from the city, from anywhere but here, with a more colourful evening than anticipated. Going back in meant having to hear more terrible songs and stories and see more terrible sights and drink more terrible drinks. Holly shivered and stamped her foot in the snow-covered sidewalk and refused to go back in after making such an artful escape. Claiming doctorly duties was a handy tool.

She took another step, and then another, and soon shrunk into her coat to protect her frozen ears. By the time she passed the bank and the newsstand and the tiny dance studio on the block, a light snowfall began to fall and add to the piles on street corners. The streetlights were barely enough to illuminate the street, and the snowflakes glittered and fell in tiny shadows against the town.

Holly was almost unready to call it a town. Main Street and that was it, did not a town make. But it had a kind of beauty and simplicity that she supposed could be attractive to a certain type of people. The quiet and the bedtime of the surrounding streets made her miss the constant noise of the city she grew up in, with its hissing subways tossing steam into the air from grates in the sidewalk, and the smell of life, of food on one street corner blending into exhaust from a bus, all surrounded by a Babel of languages swirling together in a shrill and lovely cannonade. The quiet of the sleepy town tucked in the very north and wedged between mountains and forests and much more trees than she'd ever seen, it was exhausting in its quiet contemplation and lack of distractions.

After another block, the snow continued to fall, further deafening her in the muted hues of town. The bar was not even a whisper in the distance. It almost scared her, for a moment, to be the only living soul out and about in the middle of the night. But it was almost addicting and sweet in its guilty pleasure status. To exist in a world surrounded by people who were asleep and dreaming and unaware that she was traipsing by was new and novel. The small cheer she gave out when she saw the bend in the road that circled the park in the town centre seemed almost too loud in comparison to her stealthy existence.

As she stood on the corner and waited for the light to change and permit her to cross, Holly decided to walk through the tiny park. She was overjoyed and rejuvenated by her correct choice in direction that she didn't even let the flurry of snowflakes dissuade her careful creeping in the night.

The victory, however, was short-lived, as she stood at the mouth of the park and realized that the streets that branched off were unfamiliar and she had no memory of which one came next in her trek back to her warm bed and a full night of sleep. She turned around and looked back at the accumulating dusting on the blacktop of the street and debated her return to the bar. It only lasted a moment before she threw herself into fate and entered the park, deciding to freeze to death in her search for home rather than admit defeat. And she entered the park at a slower pace.

"Oh holy fuck!" she jumped out of her skin at the movement of another human in the gazebo as she walked past it.

"Ouch! Christ! Fuck!" the body fell from its bench after being smacked by whatever it had thrown in the air and missed at catching.

"Oh my God," Holly quickly went to look between the slats of the railing. "Are you alright?"

"Hhhssssss, owwwww," the girl was doubled over on all fours with her hand pushed tightly over one eye. "What the hell are you doing with screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night?" she barked, not moving from her wounded position on the floor of the rotunda.

"I'm sorry," Holly offered helplessly. "I didn't know anyone was here. I was just walking by and you moved and it frightened me, I guess." She spoke quickly and concern crept into the pauses.

"It's not a crime to toss a puck and think in the park," the girl shook her head and rubbed her eye. Uneasily she stood and shook her head.

"I didn't know you were here," Holly insisted again to the snarky blonde before her. "I was startled."

"_You_ were startled?" the girl ha'd. "Imagine getting screamed at out of no where and taking a puck to the eye." With a few blinks and the pressing of fingers to the cheeks around the spot of pain, she continued to mutter. "Started. Fuck. I guess it's alright then."

"Are you alright?" Holly tried another tactic.

"You gave me a black eye," the blonde retorted. Holly pursed her lips. "But I'm fine."

"Let me look," Holly held back an angry response as she made her way up the steps a few steps ahead of her. "I'm a doctor."

"I'm fine," she insisted as Holly approached. The dim light from the roof of the enclosure put her in a better view for the practitioner in question. Tall and with wide shoulders, the girl had the beginnings of a nice shiner on her cheeks and around her eye. Though her jaw and chin were sharp and angular, there was a softness in her eyes that froze in their icy blueness. "I've had much worse," she mumbled after turning away from her appraising of the good doctor.

"All the same. You probably have hypothermia from being out here, and possibly a concussion, which is not a good combination."

"Listen, Doc, I'm fine. Carry on to the lodge or wherever else you're staying." Holly laughed slightly.

"I don't actually know how to get home, so I have time." Not taking no for an answer, Holly approached a bit closer to the wounded woman in question. With tentative hands she held up in a sign of peace, Holly smiled slightly. "I promise I'm a doctor. And I just want to make sure your bad aim didn't do any damage."

"I've done this my entire life, and I've never missed," the stranger fumed. It just fuelled Holly's drunk grin. "I don't even know you. Do you have a badge?"

"That would me neat," Holly agreed with a nod. "But you'll just have to trust me."

It was meant as a joke, as a rib, but Holly watched Gail squint and size her up honestly, as if truly debating if she could measure some form of trustworthiness from the woman who now approached her in the middle of the night. Holly felt entirely unready for such an invasion. It might have been the drinks or the snow or the cold, but the gaze made her self-conscious and sobered.

"You can't do anymore damage, I guess," she finally relented with a flex of her jaw muscles.

Gail apprehensively allowed the dark haired stranger to check on her damaged eye. It wasn't something she was new to at all, as she frequently had black eyes during the season and practices, but she humoured the woman who was genuinely concerned and slightly guilty. For a moment, Gail wasn't even upset at being inconvenienced from her quest to mourn being interrupted. She was failing miserably at it anyway. No place felt like it was the _right_ place to do whatever it was that she should do to get over this feeling that felt like television static in her veins.

This distraction, of the pretty doctor with warm fingers and deep black eyes that reminded her of a teddy bear and black hair that was dotted with white snowflakes, it was something she didn't bother fighting because it was a losing battle and because she honestly had nothing to return to but the circling of her own thoughts that amounted to very little at all.

"Well, you're definitely not broken," Holly said, pressing along the orbital. Gail hissed at the pressure of her swelling eyebrow. "And there's no open cut, so that's good."

"Okay, alright," Gail pulled her head away. "Enough of that. I told you I was fine."

"It's going to look pretty nasty. You'll have to ice it."

"That's just perfect," Gail shook her head and growled, taking a few steps to the other side of the pavilion. She looked on the floor and picked up the puck when she found it. "Nothing like a heinous black eye to sport to match my black dress for the funeral tomorrow."

"Shit," Holly stated simply. She watched the girl dust off the black rubber disk and shove it in her pocket. "I'm so sorry," she pleaded with the other woman's back. "I'm really sorry." Gail just sighed and shook her head.

"You said you're lost?" she asked after pulling out a small flask from the inside of her coat. Holly nodded as she watched the cap become undone. "Where are you staying?"

"Um, with the Gardner's," Holly remembered. "I think it's on Lilac Street." Gail smiled after taking a swig and offering it to the doctor. "I think I've had enough."

"It's cold," Gail insisted, trying again until Holly reluctantly took it and allowed the warmth to spread from her sip through her lips and chest and lungs. Gail was quiet as she took another swig before closing it again and tucking it back into her pocket.

"My sister, she's marrying their son, and the bridal party is staying there while the guys are at an uncles, I think," Holly rambled, infused with a case of jitters with the drink.

"Oh, I know the Gardner's," Gail assured her. "It's about three blocks up and you take a left at the old restaurant, go up two more streets and it's the third driveway on the right, on the left side of the opening."

"Right," Holly nodded, as if she remembered all of the instructions. Gail watched the doctor forgetting as they spoke. "I think I can do that. I mean, I get around a city that is literally like seventy thousand times bigger than this place, so it shouldn't be too difficult. I mean, I don't know why we had to have a wedding way up here in the winter, but that's my sister and she's... well, she's just. I don't know. And his sisters." Gail snorted. She knew. "This place is mad."

"I'm going that way," she lied as the stream of consciousness finally faded.

Holly snapped her mouth shut at that. She couldn't articulate anything else, so she just gestured for the stranger to lead the way. Their boots both clumped along through the slush and snow on the sidewalk for a block before either could articulate anything.

"Who died?" Holly asked bluntly. She meant to work it out with more grace, but she'd been drinking and she only had a few more blocks until she would be in her nice warm bed.

"My grandfather," Gail answered mechanically. She squinted against the cold breeze and hunched her shoulder at the release of information.

"Was he important to you?"

"Yeah," Gail nodded.

Holly sank into her coat more and swallowed. Her mouth was dry after the sips of alcohol. Gail felt her fingers clenching to fists. She wasn't even angry, but she felt riled, for no reason at all.

"What was he like?" Holly asked on a street corner as they turned to cross. It felt like the only thing to ask in that moment. What else was there to press a stranger about in the middle of the night in the middle of no where.

"Aren't you a bit nosey?" Gail retorted, gingerly feeling at her eye again.

"Yeah, I guess. I've just never been to a funeral. I guess it's a curiosity."

"I suppose they're pretty much like weddings," Gail decided after thinking for a moment upon the subject. "Pomp and frills and at the end of the day you find yourself sitting at a horrible reception hall surrounded by people you only see at those sorts of things and you've spent every conversation repeating yourself in such a way that you don't really know if it's possible to break the script."

"You sound like a load of laughs at parties," Holly sighed.

"I'm sorry," Gail apologized uncharacteristically as they walked across the street. The city seemed to be filled with quiet thuds of snowflakes bouncing around. She blinked away some that stuck in her eyelashes and on her skin. "I just... I honestly don't know." She let out a small chuckle. "It's been a long week."

"And now you have a black eye on top of it all," the doctor observed.

"I'm okay with it," Gail decided. "This has been the first time I haven't gotten caught in this whirlpool of my thoughts in a long time."

"A whirlpool?"

"Yeah, you know," Gail kicked along the snow and ice on the sidewalk anxiously. "Like... I have to make this decision, and it's important. And the only person I want to talk to about it is dead. It's like a terrible joke. And he's dead and I don't know what to do now with that. How does this work, you know? I put on the black dress and I place the flowers and toss the dirt and then I just do something else the next day? I can't figure out any of it. I feel... I feel," she scratched her neck and sighed, looking up at the black sky behind the streetlights as she turned the corner towards their destination. "I feel a river is running through me, like how I think a canyon must feel, slowly being hollowed."

They were quiet as they approached the mailbox that looked vaguely familiar to Holly. Gail was struck with her confession and the ease of it to a complete stranger in the middle of the night. More, she was struck by how much better she felt at articulating it, though still unsure of how to solve it.

"Do you always talk like this?" Holly ventured to ask. She watched Gail blush deeper than the red that the cold had brushed upon her cheeks. She watched it spread and thaw even her eyes. It was probably the sips from the flask that pushed her over the edge, but Holly was quite certain that this girl was beautiful. With her pale skin-kissed by snowflakes and her near white hair jutting out from beneath her old, cozy hat, with those eyes that looked terrified and defensive and fierce, with that face and those thoughts and worries, and even with the slight discolouration around her eye; Holly was certain that she was beautiful.

"Only when I'm here," Gail decided. She couldn't tell if this was a form of mourning. She wasn't crying. She didn't feel any different, but she felt lighter, somehow. "Only when I'm here," she said again, more sure of it, more full of belief that this was the place that put her in this state of melancholic contemplation she never experienced back where she lived now.

"I don't think that's true," Holly disagreed. "Maybe this is just a place that sets you free."

"Maybe."

They were quiet again in the quiet street on the quiet hill in the quiet town surrounded by quiet trees. Both were not used to such surroundings and both were overwhelmingly confused about their very existence in the world after the events of the night. But both stood there, on the steps, saying goodbye to a complete stranger and not knowing exactly how because neither wanted to. Both wanted to sit on the frozen step in the frozen air with the frozen stranger and say things they'd never regret because no one would ever know and this was a sacred thing- a stranger.

"Don't worry about it," Gail said as Holly took the first couple of steps. "About the black eye," Gail pointed at her face and grinned slightly. "It's kind of fitting. So thank you."

"Anytime, I guess," Holly smiled back.

Her laugh rang out in the quiet street and Gail shook her head with it as she turned to leave the doctor standing alone on the steps of a house she could never find on her own. She watched the stranger disappear into the flurry, as if she was part of it and whipped away with the wind itself.


End file.
